Better Off
by bunnyhoodlum
Summary: [Sequel to Territorial] Hinata is a 22yo Guidance Counselor at her old academy, Hidden Garden. Naruto is desperately trying to continue the Icha Icha series as a new writer, a task which eventually introduces him to Jiraiya's old vices: Booze and women. And all he really wants is to be loved already. Hinata isn't coming back to him. This will be the rest of his life.
1. Apart

Better Off _Apart_

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.

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It plays back like a dream. Pleasant at first when she takes off her skirt in his room, her heart beating a frantic melody, her mind screaming a chorus of her love for him; it drowns out the meek annoyance that she's been carrying with her the past few weeks.

Looking back on it now, she hears those nervous screams differently.

They sound more like protests.

When she spread her legs for him, and soaked in his ardent attention, she swooned a million times over like a bird somersaulting backwards in the air.

She felt wanted. She felt like a woman. A bold and courageous one oozing with sensuality.

Looking back on it now, she feels disgusting. She feels stupid. And her skin burns in anger.

She had shown him the part of herself that she had implicitly promised him, though she were to serve as nothing more than an onahole for his libido. And were he to rut into her core with his eyes closed and possibly go about chanting Sakura's name till he came, well, who knows what sort of mental state she'd be in now.

In the end, the memory of his hot breath on her sensitive flesh only burned this newfound belief that she was never a woman to him, but a notch on his bedpost.

And isn't that the outcome she had expected? Isn't that the outcome she had accepted?

Had she not also wanted him as her one and only notch? Did she herself not want all of his firsts? From his innocent curiosity to his desperate wanting, to the way she'd imagine his face would scrunch up as he grunted to completion, and she would live the rest of her days with a knowing smirk on her face, even as Sakura or any other girl hung from his arm, that she had seen these precious sides of him first, and they were having her sloppy seconds.

It's not the same.

It's not the same knowing that he was never aiming to obtain love, but to obtain bragging rights.

She would have grown to be happy for him, or so she likes to believe, had him and Sakura been happy and in love together. She would have done right by them both for her sacrifice.

She can't give him Sakura in good conscience anymore.

There are no self-fulfilling prophecies here.

There are no lies to be made true.

His own intentions were lies to begin with.

Hinata is hiding in the darkness of her dorm room, like a bug trapped beneath a cup, and she hugs her legs tighter to herself, her bed covers drawn over her shoulders like a barrier.

She recalls the abrupt end to Sasuke's ranting, the incomplete pieces to a puzzle laid for her arrange.

Naruto knows her true feelings now.

She doesn't know whether to be mad at Sasuke. It all feels so moot now.

Going back to that day in their childhood, Naruto had taken the attenion of her bullies onto himself.

She thought it was a self-sacrifice. She thought he chose nonviolence to protect her.

She loved him for that.

And she grew to love him for so many other things, from his ability to always smile, to laugh off his pain, to the gutsy way he faced each new day.

She loved him for the person he was, for the person that she wasn't, but wanted to be.

How asinine is she to disregard the fact that that boy existed four years ago, and that he may no longer exist in the now? How cowardly and childish must she be to turn away from him now?

But the purity and vibrancy of a childhood love, its heartbeat is slowing down, the sensations are moving towards the past tense and all she foresees is a gaping hole for no one to fill.

She told him that she would think about it.

But she doesn't want to think about it.

She wants to pretend none of this had ever happened.

He can go back to being the boy she always loved from afar. She can go back to being the pure maiden that she always was.

They can find each other again in the future, when fate truly allows it.

She never gives him her answer.

* * *

Days roll by and Hinata's been eyeballs deep in her studies. She's also joined the Kendo club with Karui and the student council with Sakura.

She needs to keep busy.

She needs to patch up the moth-bitten holes in herself with hard, earnest work and achievement.

Hinata had also come clean with Ino recently, which inspired Sakura to come clean as well.

They had broken their word.

Hinata moreso than Sakura, who seemed to only ever get as far as chaste pecks with the suspiciously inexperienced Sasuke.

Ino expressed her mild disappointment, followed by an admission of respect for she had no idea Hinata had such a ballsy side to her at all.

Hinata wasn't sure what to call that lapse of judgment, but it no longer felt 'ballsy'.

Getting what you want; It's a nice idea, but it's awful in practice.

You're always going to lose something for the effort.

Ino had then revealed the real reason why she suggested they get away from the boys. It wasn't her friendship with Sakura that she was attempting to save, but Sakura's budding friendship with Hinata.

Ino knew Sasuke liked Hinata.

She knew, and now Sakura knew.

The pink-haired class rep had turned to stone and excused herself. It'd taken some time before she came around.

Then, after a tense student council meeting full of cold glances and curt words, Sakura had finally asked if they could talk about Naruto.

They had sat on Hinata's bed, with Hinata twisting her skirt to death and Sakura reclined back to gaze at the ceiling, ever so patiently. Hinata finally spoke up. She started with the evening Sasuke was in her dorm room. From there they had confessed a timeline of regrets. They found themselves tearing up, their faces hot with shame and anger. Not any more at themselves than at the boys their friend chose to chase after.

Sakura had pulled Hinata in close, her chin resting on the perch of her shoulder and she decided that she would break things off with Sasuke.

Hinata had circled her arms around Sakura and held onto her. A small light lit up in her chest for her friend.

She needn't make her own declaration, for she had already been practicing it, but Sakura insisted that she voice her own promises back, promises to do better by herself from now on.

But then suddenly, in the middle of student council, her phone buzzes.

And she checks her messages.

**Naruto: Hey, it's been 15 days. Have you thought about it?**

She blackens her screen and flips her phone on its face, then apologizes for the distraction.

She apologizes to him in her head.

She hasn't given him a passing thought since.

* * *

**Naruto: Okay, 23 days seems like plenty of time to think about it.**

**Naruto: Hello?**

**Naruto: Hinata, it's been a month. Where are you?**

**Naruto: Hey, I tried to recreate that fried rice you made me. How does it look?**

Hinata is huddled down in the stiff, cold grass, her back pressed against the white walls of her school, and her eyes are aching. She opens up her messages and looks at the picture he sent her.

She slaps her mouth to silence the ghastly noise that nearly flew out of her, a noise caught between a snort and a sob.

It looks nothing like the fried rice she made him.

How he managed to burn the rice around the edges and make it so wet in the center is beyond her. It looks downright inedible.

**Naruto: I've been practicing how to cook, but it's really tough. I want to make you a nice meal like you've done for me. But I'm starting to feel like it'll be 5 years before I can reach your level. I don't want to wait 5 years Hinata.**

The electronic bell sounded off, and it was time to herd back to class.

At the end of her school day, she collapses onto her bed, and she feels herself fading into the old girl she used to be, the miserable empty shell with nothing to offer.

He's tearing her down. He doesn't know he is, but he's trying.

Her phone buzzes in her skirt pocket and she whines into her pillow, starting low then shooting high as if someone were twisting her leg off.

She rips her phone free and brings up his latest text message.

**Naruto: I shoulda said something earlier so I'll just say it now. Sasuke told me you love me. Like, since third grade or something, I forget. Anyways, can we forget about Sakura? Can you come over and tell me how bad my cooking is?**

Her heart is racing, painfully pounding, and she can't hold down the noise that bubbles up. She swore all of her innocence had bled out the day her heart fully broke. Those pieces had embedded into her chest cavity like shrapnel, and yet, like a phantom limb, she felt those past tense feelings for him.

Her broken heart still beated for him all the same.

She wants to throw her phone across the room.

She wants to pretend she never saw this last text.

* * *

She agrees to meet up, but not at his apartment.

She's haunted by the hollowness of his voice over the receiver, because as optimistic as he is, he knew where this was already heading.

When he arrives, cheeks and nose red from the biting cold, he slows the moment his eyes find her.

She's sitting on a wooden bench in the park. She's taking up the middle as if there was no room for him to sit.

Because this wasn't going to take long.

The moment this was over, she would stand up to leave, and the bench would be there to catch him when she was gone.

She's not dressed up for this either. He might have renewed his optimism had she bothered to look cute for him.

But she still wears her bangs to the side.

To her chagrin, she's grown to like it.

Naruto hovers in front of her. Her gaze is cast down, but in her periphery she can see desperation growing behind his eyes.

"Sakura broke up w,with Sasuke." She said.

"Serves him right." Naruto answered haltingly, as if he wasn't sure what to do with that information.

"With that i,in mind, you s,still don't wish to pursue her?"

Naruto places his hands inside his jacket pockets, shifting his weight to his right heel. "Not when I got you right in front of me."

Oh, there it goes, throbbing again. The necrotic echoes of innocent love. How these words would have sent her into his arms immediately.

Hinata forced her spine to stay rigid. She would not shrivel up now.

"I,It would be d,disenguous of me to e,enter in a relationship with you-"

"'Disenguous'," He muttered, his weight shifting to his left heel, then back to his right. His eyes darted to either side of the path like he was looking for a way out. "Isn't that a fancy word for 'dishonest'? Hello, weren't you dishonest with me from the get go? But I forgive you. Because the fact is you wanted me bad enough to pull some shit, and that's kind of hot." He's lips pull into a weak grin, which resembles a stinging grimace more than anything.

She wants to sink forward and hide her face in her palms.

She can never figure out if he's complimenting her or insulting her. She knows he's tactless, she knows he means well most of the time, however, she cannot stop her skin from crawling.

This is not the foundation she wished to build their love.

She never believed this chance was hers to begin with.

She keeps her silence.

She needs to rebuild her argument.

She needs to end this quickly.

His grimace evaporates and he cuts in through her thoughts. "You're rejecting me, right? That's why we're here."

Her gloved hands twist in her lap and she can barely effort to lift her head. Her eyes burn and prickle.

Because he'll be alone.

Because he'll go home wounded.

Hinata tips her chin twice. It's all she can manage. She hasn't the words. She fears he'll find a loophole in any excuse she has to offer him. She needs to keep this simple.

But then his shoes skid along the smooth dirt and she watches him sink down into a seiza. Everyone's eyes start to shoot over in their direction, and she quakes beneath the magnifying glass of their attention. Naruto places his palms on the ground, a V-shaped gap between his forefingers and thumbs and he presses his forehead to the dirt.

Hinata shot up from the bench, babbling as she reached out for him, to pull him up to his feet, but he wouldn't budge.

"I'm sorry. I know I should've said that sooner, but I'm really, really sorry, Hinata." Between the ground muffling his words to the pain thick in his throat, she heard him loud and clear.

And she still didn't know what giving into him would look like for them.

"Naruto-kun... Naruto-kun," She got him to sit up, his crumpled face and reddened eyes causing the shrapnel in her chest to throb harder. She grasped his shoulders and he finally looked at her. "W,We only have th,these two years left to prepare for the r,rest of our lives. Please... Please be good until then."

He wilted in her hands, short of pulling away from her, he gazed at her though she felt like he wasn't seeing her at all anymore. "... Are you going to be good, Hinata?"

She nodded, mustering enough courage for them both. "I'm going to be the best that I can be. That's... That's what you taught me, e,even though w,we never spoke back then. B,Because I always watched you. And you... you were a good role model back then."

The frigid earth beneath her is sapping away her warmth, her strength and she's afraid.

Because she's just admitted to the past tense.

Blue eyes devoid of their fire, he's looking past her so blankly. But she's looking past him, too. She's looking straight towards the future. Where she hopes to find him on the other side.

"So... You don't wanna come over and rate my cooking?"

Hinata retracted her right hand and made a fist. "J,Just keep trying, like you always do. A,A,And please, _please_ be good."

His eyes narrow into a limp wince, his upper lip pulls up in a way that resembles disgust and derision.

"Can you just punish me in a different way?" His voice breaks.

"What?"

He reaches out, his right hand crosses over to clasp over her fist and he presses her fist against his chest, right where his heart is beating.

"Punch me right here. Then come home with me."

Hinata stared at where her knuckles rested against his dark orange sweater, then she looked up into his sorry gaze. And she felt so cold, so absent and far away.

"I'm busy," She said as she pulled away. That was her answer. One that she had learned from her father over the years. She stood up and took a couple steps back, doing her best to push those stares out of her mind. "I,I'm sorry, I'm t,too busy, Naruto-kun."

His opaque eyes felt like he was condemning her. But it wasn't bullshit this time. It wasn't.

"Hinata..."

"It's true, I am. I,I have the k,kendo team, and s,student council, and-"

Naruto stood up, his eyes fixed to the ground. "I really wish you'd just hit me." He turned round and retreated away from the bench.

She thought she would be the one to walk away from him, but this was okay.

If walking away from him gives him some peace of mind, then this was okay.

* * *

BH: Timeskip next chapter! Consider this the prologue!


	2. Preoccupied

BH: Okay, I figured out the conflict and drama for this crap. I'll try to make Naruto sympathetic, but we'll see. Sorry this chapter is so short! Ack! Also, keep in mind: Chapter 3 of Territorial and thus this fic are both purely accidental. Terri didn't end the way I wanted it to, and now I have this surprise side project to more or less make up for it. (Or make things worse, cuz angst. And cuz, the themes in this story are uh... probably going to be uncomfortable for the first several chapters.)

Also, sorry for not updating 21 Days yet! I'll get around to it lol.

* * *

Better Off _Preoccupied_

People will throw themselves into everything to forget.

Forget their flaws.

Their mistakes.

Forget that they hurt someone.

Forget that they've been hurt.

Forget that there's probably no hope for themselves, really.

Back in high school, he tried to use sports to compensate for a bunch of things. He wanted a tether, to be anchored to a group that appreciated him better. He wanted to earn his place and show off his greatness. He wanted to be good at something.

When it seemed like Hinata had truly ghosted him, he decided he would learn how to cook.

So many grocery trips, so much wasted food, and one mortifying knife-to-finger injury to top it all off, and his determination had begun to waver.

But he kept at it.

Because she would be proud of him.

Because he would be able to repay her for her generosity.

But then she said she'd meet him at a park.

She wasn't going to come over.

He wasn't going to go back home with her.

And he hadn't.

Only on his best days did he gather the will to cook, this time for himself.

That was different.

Doing something solely for himself.

He's kind of empty inside, so it's not like there's anything he can get out of it.

He had barely graduated high school by the skin of his teeth. He had learned to cook anything he put his mind to by that point. He wasn't passionate about it, but his skill level meant you didn't have to fear food poisoning if you turned your back and let him run loose.

That was good enough for himself.

Himself.

Himself.

Mid-spring had steadily turned into late summer when his situation officially sank in.

Sai was the only one who still tolerated him, far as he was sure. Thus, he had seen the pictures of him with Ino on his social media feed.

He shouldn't have gotten curious. He shouldn't have kept scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.

He stopped on a post, one of those aesthetic quotes or some shit.

**"When your past calls, don't answer. It has nothing new to say."**

Hinata had posted that.

That was about him, wasn't it?

It had to be about him.

Who else was this for?

She doesn't want him to call her. She won't answer. She won't listen.

He shouldn't have dove in deeper like he did, trying to catch a glimpse of the girl who had loved him from afar.

Amusement park photos of her, Sakura and Ino.

Her standing beside a dark-skinned girl in their kendo armor, their helmets held against their hips.

Birthday parties and snow days. Lakeside picnics and school trips.

Their graduation photos and the barbeque celebration that followed.

There was hardly a moment where she and Sakura weren't in each other's arms, which left him feeling some sort of way, mostly heated and choked up and maybe… maybe just a _little_ bit horny.

Then there was this one photo. It looked like it was at a party, or Karaoke. Hinata and a girl with dark brown hair in double-buns were both sharing the lap of some good-looking guy who shared her unique white eyes.

Hinata had this look he'd never seen before. Just by her eyes, he could tell: Her life was complete.

She radiated from her heart, and it'd been overflowing with intense love, delight and ache all at once that night.

And scrolling down just a little further, he was right.

**"So blessed to have my best friend back. I love you, Neji-niisan."**

_Best friend. So… Even that spot is taken now, huh?_

And what did she care about a creep like him?

He didn't seek the answer, though it was staring him right in the face.

He won't say how he dealt with this revelation once he resurfaced from the deep. It wasn't his proudest moment, and like with everything else, he'd really, really, really like to forget.

And this is what he had realized once he finally came to.

This is what he had been forced to accept.

That all he ever had was himself.

That all he ever will have is himself.

So, exactly _what_ did Naruto throw himself into in order to keep forgetting?

Well, apparently after discovering that Ero-jiji's former publishing house has been regularly receiving fanmail, though supposedly it's been from the same person, Naruto grew curious about the discontinued Icha Icha Paradise series.

And curiosity had turned into passive interest.

And passive interest had turned into 'I could do this better than Ero-jiji ever did!'. That thought reminded him of the lone fan who, for someone like Naruto, was enough to validate his existence.

He'd always been the type easily satisfied by one person, any person, as long as they stick around long enough to praise him.

But research was hard.

Research nearly got him killed on a few occasions, whether he'd been running into traffic or running away from a stun gun, in the end his hard fought research had proven to be unusable and rather blurry.

What could he possibly do?

He needed to revive Icha Icha at all costs!

Naruto stood on the train, banging his forehead against the window, hoping he might knock an idea loose.

Or maybe he could just knock himself unconscious.

Maybe he could wake up and be eight years old again. He could reach into the fridge and throw out all of Ero-jiji's booze. Then Ero-jiji wouldn't go to the Parent-Teacher meeting a slurring embarrassment. Then Ero-jiji wouldn't make a mistake he had to be ashamed of for the next five years. And Naruto could have kept this apartment booze free from that moment forward.

He could have helped Ero-jiji get clean.

He could have stopped Ero-jiji from passing away.

Naruto picks up on a weird sound, like a whimper, coming from the sausage-packed commuters behind him.

He tuned in for the sound again.

Then he squeezed around in place, squinting in the direction he felt the sound was coming from.

_There's a cocky guy in there._

And no one was going to say anything in her defense.

Naruto nudged against the tight wall of bodies, but there was no getting through.

He needed to get over there.

_Fuck it._

Naruto throws his shoulder into the narrow gap between two salarymen, forcing his body through before they have a chance to close the gap on him.

He does this, earning bruises and cusses as he pushes deeper inside the carriage.

The mind is quick to look for the audacious and taboo, and Naruto's gaze finds a man's hand lost beneath the pleated fabric of a high schooler's dark blue skirt.

_His life is all clean lines and hard points all day, from his office cubicle to his computer monitor, right down to the commute home, boxed in like sardines._

_But then his knuckles brush against a cloud. Compared to the unforgiving harshness he puts up with everyday, this softness is a reprieve._

_The salaryman realizes the cloud is in fact a high school girl, and his hand is at level with her round ass._

_Her hair is long, black, glossy, like a silk scarf he'd love to feel around his neck._

_He leans in a little closer, and she smells as sweet as strawberries. His eyes roll back and he mouths a reverent thank you._

_He has no one waiting for him back home._

_So he'll take what he can get before the emptiness slams back in._

_He tests her personality by pressing the back of his hand closer and firmer against the underside of her cute little ass. She stiffens. Each courageous feel he cops doesn't make her angrier nor indignant. No, instead it makes her more fearful._

_Best case scenario. He got really lucky with this one._

**"The train is five seconds away from Horo Station."**

The train slowed to a stop.

The doors unlatched and slid open with a sigh.

And that meek schoolgirl was dragging that pervy salaryman by his necktie.

Naruto hurried after them.

_She tugged him into the restroom stall by his necktie and threw him up against the aluminum door. Her lips met his, her wriggly tongue impatient to taste his own and she forced him back by the sheer power of her need._

_She grinded against him, one long leg slung around his hip, and it seemed as though she wished to ride him through the city, his reins in her small hands._

_He couldn't breathe until she let him, and he lolled there staring at her._

_In this very moment, she looked as majestic and as vicious as a lioness._

_His cock twitched to be inside her. But she kept grinding on him._

_"Little girl, didn't your parents teach you not to play with your food?"_

Naruto kept his distance as he watched the new scene unfold, as unsexy as it was.

The girl was in tears as she complained to the KR Line Monitor, whose associates were in the process of detaining the molester for the police to arrest.

And then he saw her, the way she was back then. The girl, whose hair was actually short and sandy brown, he saw Hinata in her face.

_She stared at him, her despair and her disgust pouring down her ruddy cheeks in fat streams. Her lips curled over her white teeth._

Naruto took a step back.

He couldn't breathe.

He backed away and turned, his hesitant footsteps picking up, as if he wanted to run away from the ache beating in his racing heart.

He has enough research for now.

The police will take care of the rest.

What's done is done, and Naruto planned to throw himself into his very first manuscript with that thought firmly screaming at him from the back of his mind.

Yes, he will get that manuscript written.

Icha Icha Paradise will live on.

Because someone out there is relying on him.

And he'll put a smile on their face.

He'll make them forget their woes for a moment.

And he'll feel valid again.

* * *

BH: Wellp, this got uncomfortably meta towards the end. Also, this whole thing is morally dubious and I condone nothing. I'm just a hobbyist writer. Oh, the meta has returned!


	3. Naive

BH: Heyo! So, originally Naruto and Hinata were going to reunite as the summary describes. But a new idea came to mind! Does it mean the summary event is null and void? Nope! Plot twist! Lol

* * *

Better Off _Naive_

.

.

.

He overestimated himself.

At twenty years old, he was just beginning to see how much of this tendency played into his numerous failures and disappointments.

His living room is a nest of rejected manuscripts and balled up pages. His kotatsu is covered in his thirtieth rough draft, and he's ripping through a yellow bubble package containing a USB.

He plugs it into his laptop and he stared at the file drive. The stress has blanked his mind, if only for a moment, and several thoughts and feelings hit him at once.

What is he doing with his life?

Is he just kidding himself?

Even if he pulls it off, what if it doesn't sell well?

What if he lets down Jiraiya's number one fan?

They won't sell his stories like they were lost drafts of the late Jiraiya. And he's a nobody coat-tailing on his legacy.

What is he going to have after this if it doesn't pan out?

He willed himself to tap the touchpad and open the file drive.

Roughly a hundred photos blinked into existence, the scrollbar shrinking by the milliseconds; photos of high school girls, college girls, office ladies, outdoors, indoora, all eventually seduced into a love hotel with the photographer.

There were girls who were thin on top and curvy at the bottom. Red-faced office workers who were the complete package. Some slender and a bit tall, others were short-stacks, and some others were decently in-between.

He thought back to his first sit-in with his editor, the way his face slanted in scrutiny.

_"'Her hair is long, black, glossy, like a silk scarf he'd love to feel around his neck.'" His face scrunched up as if that sentence refused to go down nicely. "Is this supposed to conjure up an image of erotic asyphixiation or suicidal ideation? What made you think this was a good sentence? And what about this?" His editor started in on him, picking apart every single thing line by line._

_Naruto's been beat up, ridiculed, betrayed, excluded, dumped… but never before has he experienced shame to this degree._

_It's the first time he's made something and it's trash._

_He's __in__ those pages and it makes him feel like trash._

His editor had given him back copies of every Icha Icha Paradise volume they published, and had encouraged him to _really_ read everything, five times if he had to.

It took him four weeks to understand that he and Jiraiya had completely different tones.

Jiraiya's humor and tendency for self-deprecation was everywhere, it was like a comedy of a blundering fool, chasing skirts and love at the same time. The salacious aspects were tantalizing more than intrusive, even if the old man's ways were nothing but intrusive.

Naruto didn't even want to think about how melodramatic his prose read.

He recalled the fifth sit-in with his editor.

_His editor, who was no older than Jiraiya were he still alive, threw down Naruto's manuscript with a weary sigh._

_"You're writing about one woman. Why?"_

_Naruto reared back, his ears burning. "What?! No, I'm not!"_

_"You give her a different name but somehow they all look the same. Uzumaki-kun, you're a man, aren't you? Haven't you ever wanted more than one woman at a time? It's not shameful, it's human nature. We're not swans."_

He went home later that day, forcing himself to rekindle the feelings he had for Sakura, but they wouldn't come. It was like a cold draft blowing through an empty room.

Sakura was firmly tied to his feelings for Hinata and to think about either of them only amplified his situation.

He needed to look at other women. He needed to want other women.

So he had taken to people watching wherever he could, spotting pretty faces in the crowd and giving them names.

Then he thought about how he would introduce himself.

He'd bump into the girl walking opposite of him through the pedestrian scramble. She'd drop her phone and he'd pick it up. They'd lock eyes…

His sixth sit-in went like so:

_"Are you writing for tween girls or are you writing for grown men?"_

He rewrote the scene to where he, no his protagonist, had walked straight into her, his palms perfectly landing to cup her breasts.

And Naruto still remembered what touching Hinata's breasts still felt like.

His editor had approved of the scene and pushed him to go further.

The next woman he chose had actually been beside him on the train station one evening.

When her face reddened but her expression went unchanged, Naruto found a foreign hand tracing down the back seam of her pants. He had glanced up at the perpetrator, a man a whole foot taller than himself, and he grinned knowingly back at him.

And the woman, she knew he was looking, that he was aware. She straight at him! She locked in him place with her caramel eyes like… like she _wanted_ him to look.

And he did.

He became complicit, an accessory to their perversion.

Somehow, without touching her, he felt like he was the one giving her pleasure.

He pictured this woman as his - no, his protagonist's first win.

But then there was a problem.

_His editor was slumped over, his face buried in his palms. "Kid, you copied this love scene word for word from volume fifteen, didn't you?"_

How was he supposed to tell him he's never had sex?!

_"Alright, look… I won't suggest losing it with a prostitute, but you gotta figure this part out, otherwise this," He gestured at the ninth rotten draft. "Is not happening."_

A week after that visit, Naruto had run into the perverted pair at an Izakaya.

Or perhaps, they had found him.

The woman never spoke, but her leery gaze was loud and clear. Her partner did all the talking. Offered Naruto his services.

_"Tons of women come to me for my help," He began. "When they want the thrill and none of the risk, I'm the expert. You're trying to revive that ole smut series are you?"_

_Naruto bolted upright, his face red to the point of bursting. "Shhh, shhh, shhh! Don't say that aloud!"_

_The man tsked with a smirk. "Oh, you'll never pull it off with that attitude. You have to be shameless, little buddy. Embrace your work!"_

_Naruto slumped down, determined to avoid further scrutiny from the other bar-goers._

_Maybe the pervert's right. Maybe this is why he keeps failing._

_"Tell you what," He said, and Naruto perked up. "I'll share my clients with you, for your 'research'. All I ask for is five percent of the proceeds."_

_"Five percent? Seriously? That's it?"_

_"Pretty generous, am I right?"_

Naruto's finger hovered over the touchpad, the cursor floating over the circular play button of a video file. His anticipation burned him from inside, it constricted his breathing (and his pants), and began to dot along his temple.

He tapped it.

_"Mmm, you like that, don't you baby?" His voice rasped as he slid his cock in and out of her smooth, shaven pussy. Partially dressed in her school uniform, her bra had been pulled down below her heavy breasts, and her tight blouse unbuttoned down the length of her chest and nothing more._

_She nodded, moaning softly yet hungrily._

_"Tell me, how many times have you cummed today?"_

_She raised up both hands and flashed a double-peace sign with a drunken smile._

_"Four times?"_

_She nodded._

_"And where was the first time, baby?"_

_"Mmm! Behind the bus stop."_

_"How did you cum there?"_

_She threw her head back, her mouth opening wide with a gasp. "You… played with my… my…"_

_"With your what?"_

_"My,My clit!"_

_The camera zoomed down to where their genitals connected, glistening from her sopping juices. He pressed his thumb against her swollen button and she cried out, bucking her hips._

_He strummed her and pounded her mercilessly, her screams building one on top of the other._

_These private school girls are so thirsty, they take anyone's cock._

_But this girl, his special girl, she chose his over anyone else's._

He's no longer seeing from the camera's perspective, but his own.

_Her long dark hair is splayed along the pillows like ribbons of midnight and her large, inviting eyes are lined with unshed tears._

_She extends her arms towards him and smiles._

_"Naruto-kun…"_

Naruto's forehead smacks against the keyboard as he pumps his member furiously, his breathing sawing in and out through the fence of his teeth.

He knows he's not supposed to picture her, but he can't help it.

She's his special girl.

She _was_ his special girl.

_"More! More! Give me more!"_

Naruto slammed his forehead over and over again, the sounds of her voice driving him to the edge of insanity.

He can't help but picture that she's writhing underneath another man right now, that she's loving another man.

He spasms the moment she cries out her orgasm and he slumps against his kotatsu, utterly spent.

Past the edge of the kotatsu, he stares at the mess that he made in his hand.

It's watery.

He used it all.

Every last drop of happiness.

It's like a negative feedback loop.

There's euphoria for all of a second.

Then the emptiness slams back, stronger than it was before.

What is he doing with his life?

* * *

BH: Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this? Can one even enjoy shit this depressing? XD


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